Page 62 of It Happened on the Lake

“H ey. I got your message but don’t have a lot of time,” Dawn said from the other end of the telephone connection.

Harper couldn’t help but smile at the sound of her daughter’s voice. It was so good to hear from her. “I’m in between classes,” Dawn rushed on, “but I wanted to know that you were okay.”

“Still hanging in there.” Harper was cradling the phone receiver between her shoulder and chin as she washed out the ramekins she’d left out for Jinx.

They hadn’t been touched, and she didn’t want to attract any rats, especially now that she knew they were lurking due to Beth’s maniacal driving skills.

“I’m trying to find a time to come up,” Dawn said. “To see you and Grandpa. He’s out of the hospital now, right?”

“Yes. I talked to Marcia. I offered to stop by, but she discouraged it. At least for the time being. She thought he needed his rest.”

“What did he say?”

“I don’t know,” Harper admitted, placing the cleaned dishes on a towel near the sink. “I didn’t talk to him.”

“Isn’t that weird?”

“A little, I guess, but you know Marcia.” Even after all these years, she couldn’t refer to her stepmother as Grandma, even though Marcia had been around all of Dawn’s life. “I asked her to have him call me. So far, he hasn’t.” She dried first one of the small dishes, then the other.

“Do you think she even told him?” Dawn asked, not masking her suspicion.

“I hope so.”

“Yeah, well. If you ask me, she has him on a pretty short leash.”

Harper cringed at her own words being repeated by her kid. “I guess that’s the way he likes it.”

“More like the way she likes it.”

True enough , Harper thought. Marcia had always been in charge, and it ticked Harper off that her father let his wife run his life. She changed the subject. “The good news is that his ‘mild’ heart attack can be handled with a pacemaker.”

“And that’s a good thing?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. Cool. And you’re okay?” she asked.

“I said so. What about you?”

“Me?” Dawn repeated. “Fine. Yeah, fine. Just busy.”

“When you’re not so busy and I get this house together a little more, I’ll come down to Eugene and take you to lunch or dinner. You can show me your apartment. I’d love to meet your roommate.”

“Uh . . . well, that would be hard,” Dawn said, and the tone of her voice made the muscles in the back of Harper’s neck tighten.

“Why?”

“Katie moved out about two weeks ago,” Dawn admitted.

“Moved out.”

“Well, in with her boyfriend, but, don’t worry, she’s still paying half of her rent.”

“Because her parents don’t know,” Harper surmised.

“Right, and she might come back, you know. She’s only known Ryan for about two months.”

“And she’s already living with . . .” Harper let the rest of the sentence fall away. Who was she to judge? How crazy in love had she thought she’d been around that age?

“Yeah. It’s no big deal, but you don’t need to come down here yet. I’ve got a jillion things to do, like two major papers due next week, and I really need to study.”

There were probably other reasons her daughter didn’t want her to just show up, but Harper didn’t press it.

“I thought I’d come up and visit you and Grandpa,” Dawn said. “I just don’t know when.”

“That would be great.” Harper faked her enthusiasm. Until she figured out who was sneaking into the house and leaving macabre messages, she didn’t want her daughter anywhere near the place. “Just give me a heads-up, so that I’ll be sure to be here and not out running errands.”

“I’ll try to figure it out. But maybe over the weekend. Or the next one. When I figure it out, I’ll call you back. Look, I gotta run, I’m late already.”

“Sounds good,” Harper said, but Dawn had already hung up. She held on to the receiver for a minute and leaned a hip against the kitchen counter.

The thought of her daughter showing up here was a worry.

Much as she’d love to see her kid, it wasn’t a good time.

When she considered the disturbing message left on the dolls, the continued harassment from the reporter, and the fact that wily Jinx was still missing, Harper decided it would be best for her to drive to Eugene and catch Dawn on campus.

Despite the whole “no roommate” thing. Harper suspected there was more to Dawn not wanting her mother to show up and interrupt her new, independent life. Too bad.

With an eye out for the cat, Harper slipped on a jacket, then walked across the bridge to the cottage and through the unlocked door.

When she’d first landed back in Almsville—oh God, was that less than a week ago?

—she’d stepped inside the house, then quickly backed out.

Today she wanted to see just how bad the damage actually was.

Though the rain had stopped, there was a constant dripping noise inside the cottage, and the whole place smelled damp and moldy.

The carpet was squishy, the paneling peeling, the wallpaper streaked by rainwater.

Several windows leaked, and drawers in the kitchen no longer closed tightly, while a couple of the cupboard doors hung drunkenly, half off their hinges.

“Lovely,” she muttered, climbing the stairs. Two of the steps had buckled, and she silently prayed that they held. She’d already fallen through one staircase within the past year and didn’t want to do a repeat performance.

Upstairs held two bedrooms—hers and Evan’s.

Both rooms had been cleared out as they’d moved to the main house years before.

After their mother’s death she and her brother had spent more time with Gram than they had with their father and his new wife.

Bruce had been forever out of town on business with Marcia glued to his side.

She wasn’t going to miss out on the travel, nor was she going to play the dutiful stepmother and sit in this little cottage to raise his son and daughter.

Not when she could live in a Portland penthouse with views of the mountains and city lights and a security guard.

With an in-house spa and restaurant, the building was steps away from the boutiques and shops.

No room for Bruce’s kids in the two-bedroom condo.

Gram, as always, had stepped up.

“This is what happens when you don’t trust your spouse,” Gram said once while watching Bruce and Marcia climb into a taxi headed for the airport on a cool summer evening.

She and Harper had been standing at the gate, Bandit at their side as they looked through the wrought-iron rails to watch the taxi’s taillights disappear around the corner of the lane.

Harper had been about eleven at the time, and the fragrance of honeysuckle filled the air. “What happens?” Harper had asked.

“You don’t dare let them out of your sight.”

Harper had looked up at Gram in the gathering dusk. “But you trust Gramps, right?” she’d asked.

Gram’s smile had twisted. “Not on your life.”

“Really? Why?”

Her grandmother had sighed. “Oh, honey, it’s complicated,” she’d said and brushed aside a bumblebee that was buzzing near the fragrant blossoms.

“How complicated?” Harper wanted to know.

“Oh, like so many things in life. You’ll see.”

Her grandmother tugged on her hand. “Come along now, let’s go inside.”

“Wait.” Harper stopped, gazing up at the pillar where the dragon gargoyle crouched. “What’s that?” She pointed a finger at the overhang on which the statue rested and the papery mass beneath it. Tucked beneath the shelf it looked like gray cotton candy with a dark, narrow hole at its tip.

“Oh, a nest.” Gram said. “Hornets.”

Harper studied the shiny creatures crawling on the nest and took a step forward until Gram’s hand held her shoulder. “Don’t disturb them,” she warned. “Their stings are painful. And in a nest that size, there are enough of them to do real damage.” Her voice trailed off.

“We should tell the gardener to get rid of it,” Harper had said.

“Yes. Yes. I suppose we should. Don’t worry about it, okay? I’ll take care of it.” With that, Gram whistled to the dog as she tugged on Harper’s hand and started walking back across the bridge.

“I’ve got a new board game for you,” Gram confided, squeezing her hand. “Have you ever heard of Stratego?”

Harper shook her head and glanced over the side rail to the darkening water far below. “No.”

Bandit, ears flopping, shot past them, startling Marilyn, the pretty calico cat who had been sunning herself on a flat rock near the garage. Arching her back, she hissed at the dog, then scrambled up the rough trunk of a fir tree.

“Oh, Bandit, don’t scare the cats,” Gram mock-scolded with a chuckle.

As the dog wandered off, sniffing at the rose bushes in her garden, Gram explained, “Stratego is kind of a military war game, but you’ll like it, I think.

What you do is root out the spies of your enemy.

Use logic. It’s easier than chess but can teach you a lot about your opponent’s strategy—hence the name, I suppose—and knowing your enemy’s mind-set is always important.

Not just in game play, but in life.” She sighed heavily and glanced up at the heavens just as they reached the parking apron.

The house loomed before them, the first stars of evening visible in the sky.

“Your mother, she never learned that lesson,” Gram admitted sadly, then looked down at Harper and touched her on the nose.

“Boop,” she said as she always did. “We won’t make the same mistake with you, though. Not on your life.”

Today Harper felt a pang, missing Gram, but rather than allowing herself to get caught up in nostalgia or, worse yet, melancholy, she stared at the interior of her childhood home, taking stock and wondering if this cottage was even worth repairing.

Maybe it would be better to raze the building and start over.

She’d find out more when she had her meeting with Craig Alexander, she supposed.

She didn’t have to wait long.